Who owns your language?

LANGUAGE

This month we look at who owns a language and who gets to make decisions about it

IN one sense we all own our languages because every day we all make decisions about which language or languages to use and how we speak them. We all speak at home with our families and whether we speak in our own language rather than Tok Pisin determines whether that language or Tok Pisin gets passed on to the next generation.
Younger people also make a choice. When a grandparent speaks to them in an ancestral language but the children answer in Tok Pisin or English, they are making a decision about which language is more important to them and which language they want to own.
Similarly, the style of language that we use is a choice. Teenagers especially like to experiment with language and use the newest phrase they have heard. This is how slang is developed and how creativity makes a languages come alive. Sometimes older people react against this, telling the young people to “speak properly”, but what this really means is that they don’t like the young people showing their control of a language in a public space.
Of course not all of these choices are conscious. In fact, they usually are made automatically without our thinking about them at all. Sometimes though we think about the possible choices and make a conscious choice about which language we will speak at home or which wording or style we will use. That is what I mean about our ownership of a language. Many people do not think about these issues; by doing without thinking, they are giving ownership of their language to others.
In some countries there is a central office that says what words are “real”, how they should be spelled, and how they should be pronounced. We don’t have that in PNG. But many groups do have outside organisations such as Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), missionaries, or foreign linguists who make spelling systems and write dictionaries.
Sometimes these people translate important books such as the Bible and over the years the way they translate becomes the prestigious way to write the language, even if it is not the way native speakers of the language like to speak. It is useful to have the tools that others bring to a community, but when those tools are taken without the actual speakers reflecting on whether they are useful or not, ownership of the language is being given to those outside groups.
A better way is to investigate the tools that outside groups have made available – dictionaries, spellings systems, books – to evaluate what is available and whether they are appropriate. Sometimes groups might come up with a decision that they like the tools that have been made available and they want to use them as they are or they might even ask for more assistance by the persons who established them. At other times, users may find that there are shortcomings that they, as speakers of the language, will fix. In some cases they may reject the outside workers’ tools completely.
An extreme example of this was with the native Pueblo people of the southwestern United States. Linguists had put together a writing system for their language and wanted to introduce local language reading and writing in the Pueblo children’s schools. Their elders forbade this, saying that their culture was an oral, not a written, culture, and they did not want to introduce the changes into their culture that writing would bring.
They were happy for their children to learn to read and write in English and to use it for learning American culture, but they wanted their children to learn their own culture orally, not with a writing system developed by white people belonging to the culture that had oppressed them for so long.
Of course, this is a choice that Papua New Guinean groups are unlikely to make. More likely choices are those made by a group of Koita speakers in Central, who started to meet last year to discuss ways of making sure their language was passed on to the next generation. They decided that writing and books are important, but they had problems with the way that linguists had written their language because of the differences between pronunciation in different dialects.
They are now working out how to adapt the linguist’s writing system in a way that it suits all groups. They also contacted the editors of Ethnologue (www.ethnologue.com), which has a list of the official names of all languages, to get them to change the official name of their language from Koitabu to Koita. They said that “Koitabu” is a name given to them and their language by their Motu neighbours and they did not want to be known to the outside world by a “foreign” name. Ethnologue read their submission and agreed to the change.
By examining the limited number of articles written about their language, choosing how to use them to write their language, and getting international organisations to recognise their language by the name they themselves call it, these Koita speakers have been establishing control and ownership of their language. If they combine these choices with a campaign to encourage families to use Koita at home, there is a good chance their language will survive into the next century.
The choices that the Koita speakers have will not be the same as those that others will want to make, as histories and circumstances in different areas vary greatly. But in all communities, choices that are made consciously and with community consultation will be choices that give community ownership to their language and ensure that their languages survive.
Languages with ownership are languages with speakers. Languages without ownership end up becoming languages without speakers. Which do you want for your language?

• ProfVolker is a linguist living in New Ireland, and an adjunct professor in The Cairns Institute, James Cook University in Australia. He welcomes your language questions for this monthly discussion at [email protected]. Or continue the discussion on the Facebook Language Toktok page

A breath of fresh air at last

By ALPHONSE BARIASI
THE Gordon market area of Port Moresby, a notorious spot for criminals to hang about and do their thing, has changed.
Gordon Estate, as one local there insists is its proper name, is now a cleaner and safer place t. And this is thanks to the work of a volunteer group of young mena nd father swho had become tired of seeing their home taken over by thugs and litter bugs.
Their leader and the one who started it is William Yogomin, who had lived at the Gordon all his life and seen it go from a quiet and friendly neighbourhood to a filthy stomping ground for criminals.
Almost every day at the busy Gordon market and business area some unlucky woman gets assaulted or robbed; or some passenger boarding a bus is relieved of valuable possession. All that while piles of foul-smelling rubbish lie unattended to.
Enough! Yogomin said one day. And he got to work. Soon other like-minded people joined him, mostly young men who also have had enough of the bad things happening at Gordon – and the bad name attached to it.
Yogomin was the PNG Australian Football League (PNG AFL) talent and player manager since 2001. In that capacity he has spent a lot of time working with youth and school kids – enough time in fact to know something about their behaviour and their prospects in life.
He stepped down last year to spend time focusing on something else to do.
Yogomin, of Tufi (Northern) parentage, has lived all his life in Gordon.
“Gordon wasn’t safe. We have now changed it – with a single rake and a spade,” Yogomin boasts.
Every day for the past three weeks, young men have taken on the task of removing piles of rubies on the sidewalks and cleaning out drains stuffed with all manner of trash.
“The youths and elders have seen enough of women and girls being harassed, robbed or nearly raped. Enough is enough! We will take back Godon – which includes the Gordon Police Barracks,” Yogomin said.
“We started cleaning up on the day of the final State of Origin Game. Here, I have come to know that when State of Origin comes, petty criminals would want to have a few drinks so they steal from unsuspecting pedestrians or commuters. I decided then that was the right time to start this campaign to clean out Gordon market area.
“We are not only cleaning up; we are also educating commuters, shoppers and others who come here. We have tasked marshalls to go around with a loud hailer directing pedestrians, commuters and bus drivers. The buai sellers are now a lot more responsible with their rubbish than before.”
Yogomin is fully aware – and worried – that what his group has embarked on cannot be sustained without assistance from the city authorities.
“We appeal to the authorities to come down and see what we are about. We are trying to train and rehabilitate out-of-school youths who have been residing in Gordon all their lives. They have nowhere to turn to and resort to lawlessness and anti-social behaviour. If we succeed in getting a handful of these young people into technical and vocation education, that would be a huge bonus for us,” he said.
“The TVET programme in the city is not benefiting our kids. It is a pain to us. In sports, a talented few benefit from sponsorships and programmes. Here, when we engage everyone, everyone benefits. If at least 10 kids make it into school, we’ll be happy.”

Yogomin is ably assisted by former servicemen Sinah Homoka (ex-soldier) and Peter Hari (ex-policeman) who too have lived all their lives in Gordon.
Homoka says he grew up in the suburb and calls it home.
“We’re tired of others (from other parts of the city) coming here to cause trouble. We decided to take the initiative. It had to come to a stop. I am happy now that change has taken place.”
The young men, including those in school have have willingly joined in the daily clean-up. This they do out of concern and pride for their suburb.
One such student is Yogomin’s nephew Yatom who attends Port Moresby Business College. He was on semester break at the time of the interview for this story.
“I was born in Gordon. There has been so much negativity that when my friends asked where I was from, I was shy to tell them I lived in Gordon. I’m now motivated and happy to be part of this initiative to clean up our suburb,” the 21-year-old said.